Cancer: A Second Opinion [Paperback]

Josef Issels M.D. (Author)

Book Description

Series: An Avery Health Classic Edition | Publication Date: October 15, 1999

The author's revolutionary approach to cancer treatment caused a storm in the medical profession around the globe. Believing that a tumor is merely a local manifestation of a whole body disease, he advocated a personal, "wholistic" approach that continues to be studied today.

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About the Author

Josef Issels, M.D., studied in Freiburg, Bonn, Munich, Vienna, Dusseldorf, and Wurzburg. In 1951, he established the first European hospital for "incurable" cancer patients. Biographer Gordon Thomas captured the mythic proportion of his life and medicine in Issels: The Biography of a Doctor. Dr. Issels lived from 1907 to 1998. His work is continued by the Issels Foundation, which is headed by his wife and forty-year collaborator, Ilse Marie Issels. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Avery (October 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895299925
• ISBN-13: 978-0895299925
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #270,217 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Questioning Cancer Orthodoxy, November 12, 2001

By 

Don Benjamin (Crows Nest, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cancer: A Second Opinion (Paperback)

This book is perhaps the most important book written on cancer in the twentieth century. This is because Josef Issels demonstrated in his Cancer Clinic in Bavaria the most successful results ever achieved with late stage cancer patients (16.6% five-year survival and 15% fifteen-year survival - more than 5 times better than any orthodox therapy before or since.
Recent evidence continues to question the current paradigm that cancer is a local disease that later spreads. Issels instead saw cancer as a systemic disease that in its later stages showed observable symptoms, the tumours. Treating the tumours was therefore a waste of time unless the cause was tackled. He saw the causes as many, including physical, emotional and spiritual so he tackled all possibilities with dedication and a caring approach. The only contributing factor he apprently underestimated was the emotions. Four well-run randomised trials have since shown that simply tackling the emotional causes can have dramatic results, typically 50-70% increased survival times. But his Wholebody-therapy he used in the 1960s has still not been matched by any of the other alternative cancer therapists since. The book gives a history of the treatment of cancer over the past few thousands of years and goes into a lot of well-documented factors that make up his total treatment. For those who want to understand the cancer process this book is essential reading.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars for the layman, April 25, 2001

By 

"craczka" (Marlborough, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cancer: A Second Opinion (Paperback)

The one word that can ruin your day, actually ruin your life is Cancer. My wife and I are fighting and I mean fighting! We are very careful who we talk to and what we read and listen to. This book is for fighters. If your fight currently involves that nasty word (cancer), get this book and strengthen your fight. Also check out the Oasis of Hope Hospital and Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Keep Fighting!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Whole-Body Therapy, May 8, 2009

By 

P. J. Sullivan (Northern California USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cancer: A Second Opinion: A Look at Understanding, Controlling, and Curing Cancer (Paperback)

In America, we are told that only three treatments are available for cancer: surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Anything else is considered quackery or is illegal. All three attack the tumor.

Dr. Issels took a different approach. Instead of attacking the tumor directly, he corrected the internal milieu of the body that allowed it to develop. He removed the external and internal causes of the tumor. He did not rule out conventional treatments, but supplemented them with fever therapy, ozone therapy, hot ether therapy, substitution therapy, hormone therapy, enzymes, diet, non-toxic herbal alkaloids, in his whole-body approach to cancer. Whatever was appropriate. He removed dead teeth and infected tonsils that he believed to be sapping the body's resistance. He used immunotherapy, in which he injected antigens to stimulate resistance. And did he succeed? Apparently. He claimed a 17% remission rate, while working with "incurable" terminal patients. I cannot agree with his dietary, as it permits grains, milk, and sea salt. But otherwise it has some merit.

This book was written for lay readers. There is some medical jargon here, but an intelligent lay reader should be able to grasp most of it. See also "Time to Heal," by Peter Newton-Fenbow, a patient's account of his experience with Dr. Issels.